I figured stuff like Yu-no was done that way because of the restrictions consoles place on them, as opposed to visual novels toning things down for the audience.
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Why women criticise sexualised character designs |OT2| I have no pants and I must scream (READ OP)
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I figured stuff like Yu-no was done that way because of the restrictions consoles place on them, as opposed to visual novels toning things down for the audience.
Visual Novels are always going to be niche (much like choose your own adventure books in literature have always been niche). It's pretty clear they don't have the same mass appeal. That said, it's still likely possible that VNs could be a considerably larger and more varied genre, if it wasn't for what has been forced onto it.
That's really the biggest problem with sexualization in general - it carves out the narrowest (and generally most uninteresting) window you could possibly imagine for a character. If tropes are an "I don't care" shorthand for laziness in writing, sexualization is a "fuck y'all" (metaphorically and literally) shorthand in character design.
I want to ask why we're lazy but as I am frequently lazy, I know the answer. I just think it's possible to be lazy without also being gross and derogatory towards people.
I know that, but since she looks absolutely nothing like him, I always thought she was adopted or something.
And her design in HL: Alyx makes her look even more caucasian.
For all its sexist flaws, I would actually say that some of the design from CinematicMod makes her look more in-line with her supposedly afro-american heritage. But don't worry, I'm not defending that piece of garbage.
We need more black female protagonist in gaming.
I know I am a few days late to this but I found the conversation about Alyx really disappointing. As has been pointed out, Alyx is half-black and half-Asian. This is a characteristic that she shares with her original voice actor, Merele Dandridge:
The idea that because her dad is black and her new voice actress black, therefore she needs to be more black not only erases many of the traits of her original design but it also falls into negative stereotypes about what a family should look like. As a person of mixed race myself, I have had people question my dad's parenthood because I didn't look white like him. Even among siblings in mixed race families, appearances can vary greatly. I have been told that I look more Asian while others have said my sister looks more European. There is also the stigma of not being "race" enough by certain people.
Mixed race characters are rare in media and in videogames so seeing Alyx in Half-Life 2 was a great experience for me. It didn't matter if she was as black as her dad. Based on the dialogue and interactions alone, you could believe that they were father and daughter and that was enough. It's disappointing to me for someone to say that their needs to be more black characters in gaming in the context of discussing how Alyx isn't black enough suggests people don't consider Alyx a black character because of her complexion.
And I can tell you that Alyx's darker skin color in the cinematic mod wasn't done to be more progressive or inclusive. It was done to further sexualize Alyx's "exotic" traits.
I was just gonna talk about Steins;Gate, which I finished for the first time this year. It feels like it draws from the same wellspring but turns the creep factor down to the absolute minimum without getting rid of it entirely.
I feel this way too. Interface-wise, I feel like with the right writing and visual style, a VN on smartphones could be a real mainstream hit. It's really just one step removed from reading an ebook.
Pretty sure there are plenty of visual novels out there that fly under the Gaming Community Radar because they're not explicitly targeted towards male otaku...
That's probably true, most of the ones that have gotten localized have been otome (romances aimed at women) games. For the longest time, they were the only ones getting localized other than the games with puzzle elements like Ace Attorney or 999. The male otaku ones only started getting translated very recently, and I suspect they're still the minority. I'm not sure if the otome localizations have slowed down or not, but it sounded like Koei-Tecmo was thinking about bringing over their Angelique line, which would be a pretty big deal. The first one (several?) was made by an entirely female staff, iirc.
I imagine there are plenty of good Japanese visual novels that will never get official releases over here. The only VNs I play/read are indie ones made outside of Japan like Heaven Will Be Mine and Heart of the Woods.
This may be of interest to this thread's regulars:
Fucking. lol
Fucking. lol
Picked up an Xbox One X and promptly downloaded the Code Vein demo. I wanted to see if maybe, MAYBE, the gameplay was good enough to look past the female designs I'd seen. Then I actually looked at all the outfits during female character creation and ugh, nope.
I normally only play as women if I can because, well, it helps me with some gender identity issues. If I keep playing this though, it'll likely be as a male character.
Like, this is what your default is and it's...well it's not great:
At least this bondage-inspired one shows almost no skin:
Then there's this one, with it's back-strapped "corset"? (note: the video I'm using didn't have a good full-body shot with all the accessories)
Presented without comment:
BONUS: This one can end up looking like this when you're done:
At least she has pants?:
Again, no comment:
Why can't I have a t-shirt and pants?:
I normally only play as women if I can because, well, it helps me with some gender identity issues. If I keep playing this though, it'll likely be as a male character.
Like, this is what your default is and it's...well it's not great:
At least this bondage-inspired one shows almost no skin:
Then there's this one, with it's back-strapped "corset"? (note: the video I'm using didn't have a good full-body shot with all the accessories)
Presented without comment:
BONUS: This one can end up looking like this when you're done:
At least she has pants?:
Again, no comment:
Why can't I have a t-shirt and pants?:
I'd love for a JRPG to play the perverted friend trope completely straight. Like he's introduced as a party member in chapter 1 with his perverted antics, and then he gets arrested and sent to jail in chapter 2 for sexual harassment. The player would lose any items and experience points they invested in the him.
And they would have no one to blame but themselves.
And they would have no one to blame but themselves.
Most VN are just Harem bait. I am always turned off when the cast is full of girls and one guy. Not against have a bunch of female characters but it always feels like it's for sleazy reasons.
lol
That would end up being too scary for a large chunk of JRPG fans. It'd be like a COD game campaign had a character who was not okay with the use of the n-word. It would not be popular among the core consumer of those games.
As someone who put too much time into a character or two in other jrpgs, like Silver Star Harmony, for them to immediately abandon the team....I support this idea.
Love this idea, but honestly I would just settle for the women party members to just call the PC out for letting the pervy character get away with their antics. Really just any kind of push back against this disgusting archetype would be refreshing. This cliche of the harmless pervert really needs to just die in a fire.
Yeah, particularly in that it's not harmless. The fact that it's treated as such is genuinely awful, especially now that it's so prolific that it's cultural.
Heart of the Woods is the best! I also love the Flowers games, they are very lovely and not male-targeted at all.
Heaven Will Be Mine I tried but I had no idea what was going on.
Heaven Will Be Mine is hard to get into due to the jargon/sci-fi elements, but it makes more sense after you've played at least two of the characters. I swear that game is dripping with more intimacy than most romance fiction.
I do like that Sylvain in Three Houses gets pushed back every time he tried to be a womanizer, even though he still gets off lightly.
Some spoilers for Death Stranding in there, if you care about the game.
I like how they began with "Amelie's inappropriate footwear". I laughed out loud during the game when she started running on the rocky beach with her high heels!
Also,
while I didn't have the impression the scene where Fragile had to walk under the rain in her underwear was particularly made in a way that was sexualizing her (especially in a world where MGS4 and MGS5 exist. Generally, I don't think sexualization in Death Stranding is particularly egregious.), I do think the part in the article about motherhood is spot-on. Like I said earlier in my Death Stranding impression after finishing the game, the most "Kojima-esque" thing in this game is how the women in the story are basically just there to suffer.
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It definitely is the least problematic of any Kojima game when it comes to the women. Let's hope he keeps going in this direction for the next game. I want to believe he's trying to do better and not that he just wasn't focused on it this time around.
I've been playing Monster Hunter World. I don't know if The Handler is suppose to be our partner or some weird wife surrogate. She does the cooking, cleaning, and organizing while wishing you good luck on your monster hunts. The many times she almost dies only for your dashing avatar to save her is also concerning. Also, all the important hunter npcs are male while the handlers are female. Monster Hunter had such a nice equilibrium between the genders, when did it become so male power fantasy?
THANK YOU!!! For pointing this out. I'm so tired of the Guild "Sweethearts" from Monster Hunter Tri/3 Ultimate, the Guild"marm" from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, The Handler from Monster Hunter World, and pretty much you can click on this link for further reference.
They're all mostly females, except for one! That is absurd and sexist. Gamer boys/dudebros out there just have to have their, as you said it, wife surrogate... that consistently cheer them on in their hunts while taking care of domestic duties.
Mainly for females... "however", some males can be qualified as one too... huh... Where are the male guild receptionists at? There is only one, he is from Generations (Ultimate), and his name is Wehner who is also known as Questender in the G Rank Hunter Pub. This is to say the ratio is unbalanced 1:13 (just from mainline Monster Hunter series) or 1:20 (if we are going to include Frontiers).
This is Wehner the Questender:
Of course, Wehner is more dressed than the other flashier guild receptionists that are female. The female ones just have to show skin, even though this did ironically change with The Handler in Monster Hunter World, a game that has horrible female hunter armor design vs the properly armored designs for male hunters.
Edit: Oh actually, did some more research. Apparently you can buy outfits/skins using real money to change what The Handler wears... they of course, are flashier and show skin on her now. Sigh... take a look.
There needs to be serious changes here. Let there be more male guild receptionists, properly uniformed female guild receptionists, inclusion of important hunter NPCs that are female, and better armor designs for female hunters.
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A lot of times, these VNs are forced/obligated to have these scenes in order to just sell. One notable example is Fate/Stay Night's infamous sex scenes (So you can say that Fate/Stay Night is a Eroge, but not to be confused with at Nukige, which main purpose is to make your horny), which Nasu refused to write, and so were written by someone else in order to make less money. (Out of the 10 most popular VNs on The Visual Novel Database, 8 of them have outright sexual content, not counting leery stuff), but One of the advantages of having everything be all sexualized is the ability for writers to write whatever the hell you want. Unfortunately, when your main audience is Otaku (as far as I know, these people shell out more money for this stuff then the average joe, have you seen the episode/price ratio for Blue-Ray disks? Jeez...), you have to advertise that sort of sexual stuff unless you are a western developer, in which you don't have those pressures and can just do what you want without having to mess with your vision in that way.
Muv-Luv comes to mind because I heard that it is a very great and emotional drama, but the character designs are going to turn lots of people off because of stuff like the pilot suits and the company themselves knowing that stuff sells.
I mean there's exceptions. Aoishiro and Akaiito (two horror Yuri VN's) have pretty great character designs. Very elegant and refined. Beautiful even. Game has a huge Lady and Knight vibe.
But the games had a female audience in mind.
I don't want to sound judgemental, but I'm trying to figure out a scenario where you played through, like, 1/10 of the stuff you describe above, and thought "yep, this is definitely a game I should keep playing to the end". :D
Oh boy VN chat.
I've played otome which has limited R18 content so it's not quite as sad. On the other hand, MG is the only place that localizes it lol? No comment.
There's VN for phones it's under ticketed games like other mobage where it's LQ art and stories which cost $5 each or gacha hell. Honestly, they're not good but someone is clearly buying them daily. I prefer to stream VNs to my tablet if I feel like reading long routes.
FWIW: Vita does have a good VN library that removes a lot of the creepy factor by making them all-ages. IIRC really they even have a remade F/SN edition with extra character scenes.
I've played otome which has limited R18 content so it's not quite as sad. On the other hand, MG is the only place that localizes it lol? No comment.
There's VN for phones it's under ticketed games like other mobage where it's LQ art and stories which cost $5 each or gacha hell. Honestly, they're not good but someone is clearly buying them daily. I prefer to stream VNs to my tablet if I feel like reading long routes.
FWIW: Vita does have a good VN library that removes a lot of the creepy factor by making them all-ages. IIRC really they even have a remade F/SN edition with extra character scenes.
*interest piques*I mean there's exceptions. Aoishiro and Akaiito (two horror Yuri VN's) have pretty great character designs. Very elegant and refined. Beautiful even. Game has a huge Lady and Knight vibe.
But the games had a female audience in mind.
Like I said, horror/Yuri. Games are all-ages too, meaning no sex (another indicator that it was made at least partial with female interests in mind). Games are well known for their difficulty, and the fact there's tons of bad endings. (Stuff like the main character killing themselves, or being sliced in two by a sword) It also operates on a really cool chart system (to unlock certain routes you need to find hidden endings, or there's entire secret ones that you need to beat all the other game to play them) The OP's are very good indicators of the games feel and atmosphere. Both have English patches (Akaiito needs an emulator to be played though, since it's a PS2 game)
Akaiito is about a young girl, Kei Hatou going to her dead fathers house to get her inheritance, before stumbling upon the places supernatural happenings in the hour of twilight.
Aoishiro is about a Kendo team going to a Buddhist temple for Summer break, before mysterious events start occurring. You play as the Kendo Captain and Ace, Shouko Osanai.
VNs have a text skip function, so you can turn 20 to 30 hours (you need a guide regardless) into an afternoon after you give up on doing it for real Weltall Zero. You just stop at the important parts, there aren´t that many, and there you go. That´s how I gained a top-down perspective on the "lost classic". The 90-ish minute hentai OVA was another exercise in fast-forwarding to see what happens if you turn 20 to 30 hours into less, way less. But it somehow upped the incest...
I have helped to manage mangaupdates for about a decade, meaning that I get to see black and white war crimes on a very regular basis. I may not have enough fingers to list the amount of separate manga/manhwa rape scenes I saw this week alone. I rarely do but it quickly reduced itself to white-nose I experience during downtime at work and when I watch things on my PC or listen to an audiobook. It´s a vicious scene but the diamonds you find amont the trash are worth it and someone has to manage the database. Might as well be a trained/educated pro as me. Me and VNs got a messy divorce long ago though.
Stay away from VNs that aren´t game hybrids as Phoenix Wright, Snatcher, 999 and so on Era. VNs for the PC first are a no go due to the target audience.
Steins;Gate is a weeby and finicky harem game that was mostly fixed when it went anime but stop with ep. 25. Other "classics" as Saya no Uta (i fucking hate Urobutcher) and Fate/stay anything aren´t that much better than Yu-No. They mercilessly miss the game elements but they are still problematic as fuck and fairly subliterate.
I have helped to manage mangaupdates for about a decade, meaning that I get to see black and white war crimes on a very regular basis. I may not have enough fingers to list the amount of separate manga/manhwa rape scenes I saw this week alone. I rarely do but it quickly reduced itself to white-nose I experience during downtime at work and when I watch things on my PC or listen to an audiobook. It´s a vicious scene but the diamonds you find amont the trash are worth it and someone has to manage the database. Might as well be a trained/educated pro as me. Me and VNs got a messy divorce long ago though.
Stay away from VNs that aren´t game hybrids as Phoenix Wright, Snatcher, 999 and so on Era. VNs for the PC first are a no go due to the target audience.
Steins;Gate is a weeby and finicky harem game that was mostly fixed when it went anime but stop with ep. 25. Other "classics" as Saya no Uta (i fucking hate Urobutcher) and Fate/stay anything aren´t that much better than Yu-No. They mercilessly miss the game elements but they are still problematic as fuck and fairly subliterate.
Thanks for your work. I've been a user of MU for over a decade and I've never honestly thought about the ppl who managed it but it's an unthanked job for sure.
I confess I dislike S;G (and other "classics") other than the anime since Okabe is a terrible person but the anime toned it down by 50%. Also, I never read the FS/N other the anime and cooking spin-offs so I'm vaguely familiar with their universe and characters. FGO is just pure gacha mobage hell that I can't get into due to reasons.
I loathe Steins;Gate, tried to play it last year and it is just a slog to read/listen to. The breaking point in that game for me was how they handled Luka. Reading about the one ending involving her just further solidified my hate for it. I don't trust the general word of mouth when it comes to visual novels. The House of Fata Morgana is another praised one I couldn't push myself to finish.
Yeah, how Okabe kept creeping on Luka who is a good person but has to tolerate SO MUCH in the setting. I got FM as a gift but it's a lot of the same negative feeling due to the 1-2 stories having female characters w/o any agency due to plot. They just kinda ... exist and the MC is obsessed over them.
I wonder of Iceborne expansion fixed any of that. A male handler partnered with a female hunter would be cool.
Artstyle feels generic but i will give them a try.I mean there's exceptions. Aoishiro and Akaiito (two horror Yuri VN's) have pretty great character designs. Very elegant and refined. Beautiful even. Game has a huge Lady and Knight vibe.
But the games had a female audience in mind.
Since REgals is basically dead, I want to post this here. It is a video of a feminist manifestation happening in Chile against the sexual abuse of the police and in general of any men. It gives me shivers hearing it:
The lyrics translation goes like this:
"And it wasn't my fault, nor where I was, nor how I was dressed.
The rapist is you. The rapist are the cops, are the judges, the State, the president. The oppressing State is a rapist man."
The lyrics translation goes like this:
"And it wasn't my fault, nor where I was, nor how I was dressed.
The rapist is you. The rapist are the cops, are the judges, the State, the president. The oppressing State is a rapist man."
Ooo I fancy that idea. I think that would be really cool, and cute too!
Same.
Steins Gate is the only VN I've ever played solely due to positive word of mouth at the old place and I despised it. If that's the best in the genre I am touching no others.
I played through to the end and got all the endings but I understand that the main protagonist is pretty insufferable throughout the entire first half of the game. It's one of those stories where the main character is portrayed as a sort of "everyman" -- in this case a regular nerd, who manages to sort of domineer over multiple people who are obviously more capable than he is. Even the other mega nerds in the cast manage to be far less annoying. The first half of the game is a bit more self-aware about it compared to probably most VNs, but the mid-way point introduces a gut-punch plot development that hits the main character in the face with reality and things change significantly from there.
I can totally understand if someone doesn't manage to get to that point though. The MC still gets dating sim-style endings with each girl and I imagine pages and pages have been written about the game's treatment of Luka. The MC though kind of just... spends the 2nd half of the game reconciling how much of a shit he was in the first half. I also think Steins;Gate is a product of its time. It was around the vanguard of when Japanese games and anime started to really pivot towards the otaku demographic. The way the game celebrates otaku culture was still sort of fresh back then.
Oh I beat the game with every ending, even got the platinum trophy thinking I'd missed something that made it so good. A giant waste of my time really but no one to blame but myself on that front XD. I never felt any gut-punch moments or liked any of the cast and found the writing uninspired. I think the more I played it the more I resented it and put myself in a permenant negative loop.
Really not a genre for me.
Most of the stuff that's popular, especially in VNs, is some of the dumbest, cringiest writing you'll encounter. It's effectively the writer's fanfiction of some idea they had once (or someone else's that they thought was interesting, more likely). I'd say it's trash but honestly VN writing is frequently even below the likeable, if uninteresting garbage churned out by the industry. It's internet fanfiction but worse. And we know what the internet is like.
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